Jallie's Baked Beanz

Tuesday night, I met up with Linda, Laurie, Ellen and Diana at Tara Asia in Rockville to celebrate the Virgo birthdays. I'd been to their sister restaurant, Tara Thai, a few miles down the road before. Tara Thai is a chain of restaurants with locations throughout the metro DC area. To me, it was OK... but you know, I'm spoiled by home cooking from my mom, aunt and family friends.

We started with some appetizers (and of course, I forgot to take pictures!!!). We ordered Japanese style shrimp shumai (isn't "shumai" a Chinese word???), some chicken dumplings and some shrimp cakes. The shumai were very generic. Not like dim sum shrimp dumplings. More delicate. They were probably frozen, something you could get at the local Asian grocer to cook at home. The chicken dumplings were OK as well. Both were served with a soy and chili pepper sauce.

The shrimp cakes were fried and reminded me of the topping for Shrimp Toast, without the greasy bread. Of the three, this was my favorite. It was served with a sweet chili sauce.

Although I didn't get a taste, the hot dish of the evening was the Hawaiian Fried Rice, whose ingredients included pineapple and cashews. This was Linda's entree, while Diana and Laurie split an order. Ellen ordered the Singapore noodles with tofu, which are rice noodles seasoned with curry powder. I've had this before at Chinese restaurants and Tara Asia's version looked pretty tasty.

I ordered the Gai Tom Ka (chicken with coconut and galangal soup) and some Pad Kee Maow (Drunken Noodles). I didn't take a picture of it at the restaurant, but had enough left over for dinner last night to snap this:

My mom made this soup for FND last week (so yummy!!!) and I wanted to give Tara Asia's version a try. The soup was flavorful (lime juice), but didn't really have that hearty galangal flavor of my mom's. I didn't even see any galangal in the soup. It was missing that special something. It seemed like they took a bit of coconut milk, cooked up some chicken and mushrooms in it, added lots of lime, sprinkled cilantro over top and brought it out. It tasted freshly cooked, but too fresh. Not lovingly simmered like Mom's.

I had asked the server to tone down the spiciness of the Pad Kee Maow, as it had three peppers next to it on the menu. Traditionally, this dish is served as a hangover remedy, so shouldn't it be called drunkard noodles??? Or amongst our friends, Chumado noodles? Anyway, this dish was made with chicken, shrimp, wide rice noodles, tomato, chili peppers and Thai sweet basil. The dish was a bit oily, but had good flavor. I liked the texture of the rice noodles too. They were fresh with a slight springiness to them (didn't fall apart) instead of dry, rehydrated noodles.

There are so many good Thai restaurants in the DC area. One of Ellen's favorites is Thai Derm in Silver Spring, a small dive with good, homey food. And then there's Thai Farm in Gaithersburg, whose head chef used to run the kitchens at Ruan Thai and Thai Amarin (in Wheaton, both now defunct) and Benjarong in Rockville before she (with her husband and several investors) opened up her own restaurant, Sakoontra, in Fairfax. In addition to Thai Farm, they also opened up a restaurant at the Crystal City Underground.

I'd try Tara Asia again, mainly because the girls like to go there. The menu is Americanized and offers dishes that aren't too spicy for them. I'm a little biased when it comes to Thai restaurants in the DC area... maybe because my parents are very good friends with the owners of both Thai Derm and Thai Farm. Or maybe I'm just a Thai food snob.

Tara Asia
199-D East Montgomery Ave
Rockville, MD 20850
(301) 315-8008